Free Republic

WENATCHEE — Pigeons were falling dead from the skies over downtown Wenatchee, and the Wenatchee Valley Humane Society got a flurry of calls. Was it the feared avian flu? No. The Chelan-Douglas Health District was preparing to ship some of the dead birds to a state health lab for testing when someone at the Coast Hotel and Wenatchee Center called to say the center had hired a pest-control company — the state-licensed Yakima office of St. Paul, Minn.-based EcoLab — to poison the birds. "This abatement kills a couple of birds and sends a message to the birds to not...